STARTING TOMORROW: Incomprehensions!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2023

No Cluelessness Left Behind: We've cited the famous old SNL skit before.

When we say "old," we do mean old! The skit was performed on October 8, 1988, during the Bush-Dukakis campaign.

The sketch presented Candidates Dukakis and Bush in a (fake) presidential debate. Jon Lovitz was cast as Michael Dukakis. 

In the impression which helped make him famous, Dana Carvey was cast as George H. W. Bush. Here's why the sketch is remembered:

Midway through the fake debate, Candidate Bush offers a series of silly evasions in response to a repeated question from a Diane Sawyer character. Famously, the Dukakis character ends up saying this:

SAWYER CHARACTER: You still have fifty seconds left, Mr. Vice-President.

BUSH CHARACTER: Let me just sum up. On track, stay the course. A thousand points of light. 

Stay the course.

SAWYER CHARACTER: Governor Dukakis, rebuttal?

DUKAKIS CHARACTER: I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!

AUDIENCE: [Laughter, applause]

To watch the videotape, click here. For a transcript of the sketch, you can just click this.

"I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!" The site which prepared that transcript offers this assessment of the famous old SNL sketch:

This sketch is a parody envisioning of the soon-to-be-held second and final presidential debate of the 1988 presidential election campaign, which was contested primarily by Republican candidate George H. W. Bush...and Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. 

[...]

As time has passed, this fake debate has proven to be (relatively) more memorable than the actual debate it is portraying, which did not have any particularly memorable events.

In fact, the actual debate included one of the most famous—and unfortunate—events in the history of presidential debates (see below). But SNL's fake debate has lived on in memory too. 

I can't believe I'm losing to this guy! In our view, the skit is memorable because it seems to capture an unfortunate yet enduring characteristic of blue tribe political culture.

All too often, we blues almost seem to pride ourselves in our failure to comprehend why red tribe voters could possibly be supporting The Other Guy. It's almost like we blue tribe members are all "fake Dukakis" now.

Why in the world are people voting for him? When we can't imagine anything like a valid reason for some such choice, we start dropping our various bombs.

We call them racists, misogynists, deplorables—even irredeemables. In doing so, we may make it that much more likely that our own candidate won't win.

Indeed, in the age of Trump, we've gone so far as to complain when major newspapers interview voters about such questions. As such, we aren't just uncomprehending about red tribe viewpoints and outlooks. We seem to be defiantly clueless concerning what Others may think.

In the aftermath of the October 7 killings and kidnappings by Hamas, we thought we saw that attitude—that defiant lack of comprehension—suffusing a fair amount of blue tribe pundit reaction. 

In the main, we're thinking of conversations we saw on Morning Joe and Deadline: White House. In these conversations, major blue tribe "thought leaders" seemed to have no idea why anyone might be sympathetic to Palestinian causes—why anyone might be "pro-Palestinian" in their general outlook.

These pundits went on and on, then on and on, suggesting that some such alignment could stem from only one source—from antisemitism. They almost seemed to take pride in their inability to imagine other possible reasons for the outlook being voiced by some of These College Students Today, and by some other progressives.

For the record, these pundits have been reinforcing the line which is currently dominant on the Fox News Channel. According to that prevailing line, we progressives are so antisemitic that—to cite one astounding example—Barack Obama was said to need a new sign, a yard sign which (with apologies) says, "Kill the Jews."

That's the kind of rank aggression being voiced on major Fox programs. Back on MSNBC, major blue pundits have gone on and on in an alarmingly similar vein. 

Why would anyone be sympathetic to the Palestinians' outlooks or causes? The cluelessness has been deep and vast—and it has sometimes seemed to be held almost proudly.

As a general matter, our own view would go like this:

As we noted all last week, there is no single, perfect way to view the current situation concerning (take your choice) Israel and Hamas / Israel and Gaza / Israel and the Palestinian people. 

As we saw in Ruth Marcus' heartfelt column for the Washington Post, decent, deeply caring people—deeply caring Jewish people—may come down in different ways concerning these tragic events.

Different people will have different views about this horrible situation. That said, you have to be unhelpfully clueless to behave in the way some major blue pundits have done. 

In our view, progressive / liberal / Democratic Party interests have been served very poorly by a great deal of their work. In our view, that's true concerning this particular matter, but also concerning other major political topics.

In our view, we've been poorly served by much of their work. They may help elect Trump in the process. We'll discuss this problem all week.

"I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!" the fictional Dukakis once said.

The real Dukakis ended up losing. Could that possibly happen again?

Tomorrow: As heard on Morning Joe

The history of that debate: That SNL sketch aired on October 8, 1988. Five days later, on October 13, the actual Candidates Bush and Dukakis took part in their final debate.

That debate opened with a famous question from CNN's Bernard Shaw. As various sources have reported, his female fellow moderators had begged him not to ask that particular question, but ask it he instantly did.

Mainstream pundits landed on Dukakis' response like a ton of bricks. Starting in March 1999, mainstream pundits behaved in a similar way for twenty straight months as they conducted their astonishing war against Candidate Gore during Campaign 2000.

You've almost never read about that astonishing twenty-month war. By the enduring rules of the game, some events simply cannot be discussed by members of the journalistic and academic guilds. 

By the enduring rules of the game, what happens in the mainstream press corps stays in the mainstream press corps. Career players agree to place inconvenient truths inside an ironclad lockbox!